Nato troops kill 50 insurgents
2006-09-09 11:53
Kabul - Nato-led troops in a major offensive in southern Afghanistan killed around 50 insurgents in the past 24 hours using air strikes and artillery and gun fire, the force said on Saturday.
About 30 were killed in the past 12 hours and 20 on Friday as part of Operation Medusa, which was launched a week ago to drive militants out of a stronghold in Kandahar province, the birthplace of the Taliban movement, it said.
"We are engaging with everything from direct fire to artillery and airstrikes," an official with the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said, announcing the 30 latest deaths.
The killings took the number of militants killed in Operation Medusa to more than 350. Five Canadian soldiers have also been killed, one by accident.
Fourteen British airmen died on the first day of the operation when their reconnaissance plane crashed in the Panjwayi area due to a technical fault.
Much of Afghanistan's Taliban-linked violence is in the south, the heartland of the movement and where the ISAF took command of 10 000 mainly British, Canadian and Dutch troops on July 31.
The Taliban have waged a growing campaign this year against foreign and Afghan troops mainly in south Afghanistan. The regime was toppled from power in late 2001 by a US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
The group claimed responsibility for a suicide blast in the capital Kabul on Friday that killed two US soldiers and 14 Afghans. It was the deadliest suicide attack in the city for years.
The militants also attacked a border post in the eastern province of Khost late Friday.
One Taliban body was left at the site after an hour-long battle but blood-stained turbans and Afghan caps, called pakols, littered site, indicating the militants had suffered several casualties, a border police commander said.
Three police were wounded in the battle, health officials said.
In the northeastern province of Nuristan, also on the border with Pakistan, 10 trucks supplying a US base were torched by men who appeared to belong to the Taliban, witnesses told AFP.
The Afghan drivers were also beaten up, they said.